The Effects of the Avellino Pumice Eruption on the Population
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4XDWHUQDU\,QWHUQDWLRQDO ² Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint The effects of the Avellino Pumice eruption on the population of the Early 7 Bronze age Campanian plain (Southern Italy) Claude Albore Livadiea,∗, Mark Pearceb, Matteo Delle Donned,e, Natascia Pizzanoc a Emeritus Research Director, CNRS, MMSH, Centre Camille Jullian, Archéologie Méditerranéenne et Africaine - UMR 7299 (AMU - CNRS) 5 rue du Château de l’Horloge, 13094 Aix en Provence, France b Professor of Mediterranean Prehistory, Department of Classics and Archaeology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK c Istituto per le Tecnologie Applicate ai Beni Culturali - CNR, Area della Ricerca 1, Montelibretti, Roma, Italy d Research Fellow, Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies, University of Naples “L'Orientale”, Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore, 12, 80134 Naples, Italy e ISMEO - International Association of Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 244, 00186 Rome, Italy ABSTRACT Palma Campania, the type-site of the Early Bronze Age Palma Campania culture, was covered by the products of the Avellino Pumice eruption, and was thus preserved in a similar way to the Roman sites in Campania covered by the AD 79 eruption. The devastating effects of this Plinian eruption led to the belief that it had killed a large part of the local population and/or caused large-scale emigration and landscape desertification. However, new sites have been found that were established shortly after the eruption and geoarchaeological studies of areas close to the Somma-Vesuvius volcano (Boscoreale, Boscotrecase, Torre Annunziata/Oplontis, Pompeii) and also further away (the Benevento area, Irpinia and the Salerno area) have shown continuity of occupation after the Avellino Pumice eruption and during the later, Middle Bronze Age, AP1 and AP2 eruptions. Palynological analysis also shows great similarity between the environments before and after the Avellino Pumice eruption. The pottery evidence is typologically very similar before and after the eruption, which suggests that the people who resettled the Campanian plain after the eruption were closely related to those living there previously, whose material culture is that of the Palma Campania culture. Radiocarbon dates also suggest a rapid recolonisation of some sites. In this paper we shall show that although the pyroclastic products of the Avellino Pumice eruption certainly had a major impact on the landscape (soils, flora, water resources) and may have killed off a percentage of the population in some areas, this eruption was not the main cause of the socio-economic and political transformations that occurred in this area during the Middle Bronze Age, which we believe to have been mainly caused by the cumulative effect of the later AP1 and AP2 eruptions. 1. The effects of the Plinian Avellino Pumice eruption and infrastructures, particularly in those areas directly affected by huge pyroclastic flows. The volcanic products (pumice, ash and pyroclastic The Plinian eruption known as the Avellino Pumice eruption (1950- surge material) and post-depositional events (lahars, flooding, alluvial 1820 cal BC at 95.4%) devastated a large part of the Piana Campana, an fans, landslides, etc.) brought major environmental changes in these area which was densely inhabited by Early Bronze Age farmers and areas. However, we shall see that, even though the settlers left their herders (Fig. 1)(Albore Livadie, 1999). There had been increasing homes during the eruption and escaped, a range of evidence points to a forest clearance in the area since at least the late Neolithic (end of the relatively rapid resettlement of some areas affected by the eruption. fifth millennium BC), leading to the creation of an open landscape Where possible, the site of the settlement and the cultivated fields largely characterised by cereal cultivation (Marzocchella, 1998, 2002; abandoned during the volcanic event or a nearby area were resettled. Saccoccio et al., 2013). Certain areas were only very slightly affected or not at all by the cat- The Plinian Avellino Pumice event caused a severe and long-lasting astrophic event, like the area south of the volcano where the Palma environmental crisis in the areas most affected by the eruption. Many Campania culture continued without interruption, or the islands of the aspects of daily village life were gravely damaged if not completely Gulf of Naples, which were practically untouched. It seems that only a obliterated, as the eruptive products often sealed human settlements small temporal gap occurred between the abandonment of the ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Albore Livadie), [email protected] (M. Pearce), [email protected] (M. Delle Donne), [email protected] (N. Pizzano). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2018.03.035 Received 1 February 2018; Accepted 23 March 2018 $YDLODEOHRQOLQH$SULO (OVHYLHU/WGDQG,148$$OOULJKWVUHVHUYHG C. Albore Livadie et al. 4XDWHUQDU\,QWHUQDWLRQDO ² Fig. 1. Map showing the location of sites mentioned in the text, with the fallout pattern for the Avellino Pumice eruption, pyroclastic density currents in red; fallout isopachs in blue and green (after Di Vito et al., 2009). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.) settlements and their resettlement after the volcanic catastrophe; this is found below the tephra at Migliara and Campo Inferiore do not con- confirmed by radiocarbon dates and continuity in pottery forms and tradict this date and more recent work (Passariello et al., 2018), which decoration, which show similar cultural traditions. We may therefore also presents a new date on dog bone from Nola-Croce del Papa, sup- suggest that the people who left the area affected by the eruption, ports the date proposed by Passariello et al. (2009). It should be noted, settling elsewhere for a while, returned to resettle the land of their however, that the modelled date proposed by Sevink et al. does not ancestors. overlap with the modelled date based for the sheep killed by the The Avellino Pumice eruption can be dated through a combination eruption, despite their claims that the two dates are consistent (Sevink of 14C dates and pottery seriation, especially from the sites of Nola and et al., 2011: 1045). We prefer the date of 1950-1820 cal BC (at 95.4%) San Paolo Belsito. for the eruption. Sevink et al. (2011) use a Bayesian model, based on stratigraphic It is widely believed that the Avellino Pumice eruption caused a priors, to propose what they claim is a ‘robust’ date for the Avellino significant interruption in human settlement in the Piana Campana, Pumice eruption. This is based on radiocarbon determinations on peat, especially since the economy was primarily based on local resources. wood and leaves from a former lake at the distal locations of Migliara On the basis of radiocarbon dates available at the time, it was pre- and Campo Inferiore, in the Agro Pontino, southern Lazio (Fig. 2). Their viously estimated that at least 230 years passed before the resettlement modelled date for the Avellino Pumice eruption is 2010-1958 cal BC (at of distal areas and more than 1000 years before proximal areas could be 95.4%) but close examination of their plot (Sevink et al., 2011; Fig. 7) resettled (Albore Livadie et al., 1998). and rerunning the model using OxCal 4.3 (Bronk Ramsey, 2009) sug- The areas most affected by the eruption are the northern and north gests that there is a poor fit, with a very low agreement index (i.e. eastern parts of the Piana Campana, stretching towards the statistical reliability). Passariello et al. (2009), on the other hand, ob- Beneventano, Irpinia and the Capitanata. Pyroclastic products related tained three dates from a sheep (not goat, as originally described) killed to the Avellino Pumice eruption reached the boundary of Daunia, in by the eruption at the proximal site of Nola-Croce del Papa which, when Puglia region, documenting that there was an east-northeast elliptical combined using the OxCal 4.3 ‘Combine’ command, give a modelled dispersal axis of fallout deposits (Fig. 1). Grey pumices, used as temper calibrated date of 1950-1820 cal BC (at 95.4%; Bronk Ramsey, 2009). in the Proto-Apennine (phase A) pottery at Coppa Nevigata, were As can be seen from Fig. 2, the calibrated dates for the organic material probably collected along the main waterways (Caldara and Simone, C. Albore Livadie et al. 4XDWHUQDU\,QWHUQDWLRQDO ² Fig. 2. Calibrated radiocarbon dates for samples below and above the Avellino Pumice tephra at the distal locations of Migliara and Campo Inferiore, in the Agro Pontino, southern Lazio (Sevink et al., 2011) compared with three calibrated dates from a sheep killed by the eruption at the proximal site of Nola-Croce del Papa, and the combined date (OxCal 4.3 ‘Combine’ command: Bronk Ramsey, 2009; Reimer et al., 2013); all calibrations at 95.4%. C. Albore Livadie et al. 4XDWHUQDU\,QWHUQDWLRQDO ² 2012). The accumulation of small lenses of deposits in riverbeds in Puglia was a distal effect of the eruption at a distance of over 150 km from the volcano caldera (Levi and Cioni, 1998; Levi et al., 1999). At Pompeii, however, which is close to the Somma-Vesuvius volcano, only a few ash lenses may be related to the Avellino Pumice eruption, while the effects of later pyroclastic events appear to have been more sig- nificant. Rather than the result of the Avellino Pumice eruption, it is reasonable to suppose that the evidence found at Insulae V, 1 and V, 6 by Nillson and colleagues (Nillson and Robinson, 2005; Nilsson, 2008) and at the cemetery of Sant’Abbondio (Mastroroberto, 1998, 146, n. 18, Fig. 6.6) documents a later pyroclastic eruption which according to deep cores also impacted the coastal area and Civita Giuliana (Di Maio et al., 2018).